India to have online registry of hepatitis patients

New Delhi: An online registry will be launched soon to register the rising number of hepatitis patients in India, a leading gastroenterologist said here yesterday. The registry will be part of the newly formed Indian National Association for Study of the Liver and Current Perspective in Liver Disease.

Under the initiative, member physicians and health workers will keep a record of the number of people suffering from hepatitis and other liver diseases caused by it. Following that the association will disseminate information to regional hospitals and healthcare facilities to tackle the disease in a proper way.

The association will also help in making medicines available to the health centres located in the remote areas of the country. Noting that hepatitis was 28 times more dangerous than AIDS due to the absence of symptoms while it progresses in a patient, the experts said the need of registry was felt as over 75 percent of the people in India did not even know that a disease like hepatitis exists.

According to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) four lakh people die due to liver diseases, a result of hepatitis, in India every year. The states most affected by the disease are Punjab, Haryana, Odisha, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh.

"75 percent of the hepatitis may it be B or C is curable at the initial stage. However, as the symptoms are not felt so the person gets to know about it only when virus causes liver cancer," said SK Acharya, Head of Gastroenterology at AIIMS.